in japan i had the drill sergeant one, although it was really cute and looked like a penguin, it blasted reveille and said super loudly "get up! get up!". unfortunately my nightlife habits required me to get one that had a klaxon instead. my neighbors would have hated me so much but i was setting the alarm for maybe 1130AM so it wasn't so bad.

Instead of a mat with a sensor, I put my alarm clock on a table or shelf that I can't reach from my bed. So I have to get up and walk a few steps in order to turn it off. This really helps me and stops me from accidentally going back to sleep after turning it off.

The Tocky would be good if you wanted to do that, but have a snooze first, I suppose.

_________________An unprocessed chicken is walking around and clucking to itself. And yes, I think they're healthier that way too. - Tofulish

Instead of a mat with a sensor, I put my alarm clock on a table or shelf that I can't reach from my bed. So I have to get up and walk a few steps in order to turn it off. This really helps me and stops me from accidentally going back to sleep after turning it off.

The Tocky would be good if you wanted to do that, but have a snooze first, I suppose.

Cheaper solution! Except, I would totally turn it off and then get back in bed.

My dormmate in college could not wake up. She had a special alarm clock that was extra-loud and she would just sleep through it until someone (me, in this case) yelled at her a bunch. Then she'd hit snooze...fifteen minutes later it would all start over. I can sleep through alarms now, it's no good.

I got a Tocky a couple months ago after my cat destroyed the ~3rd alarm clock in a row (he wakes us up by knocking things off our dresser). Unfortunately the interface is what I would call extremely minimalist: it has an ipod style circular touch wheel to set the clock, which is nice, with one touch button on that and then another (physical) button below the screen. It's slick designwise, but it's so tiny that invariably my husband or I ends up inadvertently resetting the clock an hour slow, turning off the alarm, accidentally hitting snooze (the touchwheel) instead of off (holding in the physical button) or whatever. This makes it super-annoying and I end up also setting my phone alarm every night just to be sure we're up, which pretty much completely defeats the point.

Other negatives:- it's battery-powered, and the batteries drain and make the alarm turn off really fast if you leave it on rolling mode...there's some weird thing where if it falls off a surface when the batteries are low, it stops being an alarm until you change the batteries. Anyway it basically stops working without much warning after a few weeks.- The snooze interval can be set, but I think the limit is 9 minutes. - The LCD backlight for night is really dim. It's a black LCD rather than traditional alarm clock red, so don't expect you'll be looking at this one at night - you have to hit a button for the LCD to turn on.- it's tiny (baseball sized), so the numbers are hard to see anyway. - You can't program the alarm to only turn off certain days. You'd think at the price and the clear level of software complexity this would be a feature, but no.. and because you have to hold in the fake-button on the touch wheel to turn the alarm on and off (after using the physical button to page through a couple of menus like setting the time), it takes a while to turn it on or off for the next day. Then you have to press the physical button a bunch more times to get back to the main screen. It makes low-tech alarm clocks with simple switches look pretty well-designed!

Anyway it basically does its job, more or less, sort of, if we're very vigilant about undoing whatever we accidentally reset in the morning and are careful to check the batteries....but because I never feel like I can rely on it without a backup alarm, I'd say it's a waste of money.

ETA: on the other hand, the cat doesn't even seem interested in knocking it off the dresser, so....it's kind of a win?

Instead of a mat with a sensor, I put my alarm clock on a table or shelf that I can't reach from my bed. So I have to get up and walk a few steps in order to turn it off. This really helps me and stops me from accidentally going back to sleep after turning it off.

The Tocky would be good if you wanted to do that, but have a snooze first, I suppose.

Cheaper solution! Except, I would totally turn it off and then get back in bed.

There must be that problem with the mat as well. I wonder if they have the option for a snooze, or they just assume everyone would be completely up after turning it off.

_________________An unprocessed chicken is walking around and clucking to itself. And yes, I think they're healthier that way too. - Tofulish

I got a Tocky a couple months ago after my cat destroyed the ~3rd alarm clock in a row (he wakes us up by knocking things off our dresser).

I actually got a Clocky specifically for this purpose. My cat would break every alarm clock by picking it up with his mouth by the cord and dropping it on the dresser, or by knocking it off the dresser. When I tried getting a really big alarm clock that he couldn't pick up he would just sit on top of it and make it go crazy by pressing all the buttons.

So when we moved I was determined to cat-proof our bedroom. I put a very narrow shelf above the bed that he wouldn't be able to jump on or reach. The shelf is just big enough to fit Clocky, a glass of water and a few other things. I got the clocky because it seemed sturdy and has no cords. It's actually worked really well so far to deter him.

My biggest annoyance with Clocky is that the screen isn't backlit. Sometimes when I reach for it at night to check the time I'll accidentally turn the alarm on or off.